Featuring a cross-dressing wondrous heroine who loves to gaze at the stars and proves an original badass, the film should be on everyone’s must-watch list, for many reasons.
“Stop gazing at the stars!” “Come back to earth!” “Daydreaming will never lead you anywhere!” Those are the kinds of sayings that as women, particularly creative women, we have heard often and on repeat. And yet, there is nothing as important to creation as staring at the great sky above us, and perhaps even wishing on a great, bright star for good things to come. The creative process comes at a great cost and energy and finding within ourselves the strength and inspiration to carry on is as important as creating, in whatever medium that may be — from social media posts to great literary masterpieces. I mean, Isabella, the girl whose statement went viral when she declared that when the SM ban goes into effect she will only “stare at the wall” perhaps meant just that. The wall, in its endless possibilities, will become her inspiration, replacing her beloved phone where all is already made for her.
In Virginia Woolf’s lesser known novel Night and Day, set in Edwardian London, Katharine Hilbery is a young woman who prefers astronomy and mathematics to literature, the latter more of a family tradition as her mom Margaret is writing a long gestating book herself, a biography of Katharine’s late grandfather, a poet and critic. The character of Kat is believed to have been loosely based on Woolf’s older sister, the painter and interior designer Vanessa Bell, someone we would today call a free spirit.
In the 2026 film Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day, directed by Iranian born British artist and filmmaker Tina Gharavi, from a script written by Justine Waddell, Katherine is played by the gorgeous Haley Bennett (Swallow, The Girl on the Train) a force of nature in all her rosy complexion and long unruly blond hair. While in the novel her obsessions with the stars above is only mentioned in passing, in the film Gharavi and Waddell make it the central theme of the story and, in the process, create a spellbinding film about a young woman from a well to do family coming to terms with the obstacles of being just that — a young woman from a wealthy family — in the claustrophobic time and place she finds herself in.
To prove just how out of place it is to be a forward thinking, modern looking woman in Edwardian London, the film enlists the help of rockstar Lily Allen who plays the straight-talking, fearless, funny suffragette Mary Datchet in shades of contemporary hair, make up and clothing. Allen has become one of my favorite performers since I was lucky enough to see her play the role of Katurian in the revival of Martin McDonagh’s play The Pillowman in 2023 at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. And sporting her own aubergine colored spiky hair in the film, wearing minimalistic, androgynous clothing in the role, reminds us of how far we’ve come from the days of Virginia Woolf, whose own battle with not fitting into the roles imposed by her time filled her coat pockets with stones and drowned herself in the River Ouse, near her home in Rodmell, East Sussex at the age of 59.
Katherine is a wonder and the script gives her a chance to prove that, throughout the film. She discovers a cosmic yardstick, a means to measure distances in space, which then gets swiped by a male colleague. Of course. And she avoids marriage, a condition that would force her to stop studying, a fate she fears more than death. Her father is a bit of a chauvinist, as I imagine most men in that era were, but thankfully Kat has her eccentric mom and is surrounded by men and women who appreciate her strength and resolve.
At one point Kat declares, unapologetically, “we don’t understand our place in the universe” and perhaps this makes Night & Day the perfect companion piece to Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, also in cinemas at the moment, which implies, quite strongly — SPOILER ALERT — that we’re not alone within the cosmos and there are other species out there we are sharing this grand universe with. To think otherwise would be hubris of us, the great chaos-inducing human race.
In the film, Bennett’s Kat is surrounded by a great cast of actors, playing equally brilliant characters. Her mom, who quickly becomes the focal point of the film, is played by Jennifer Saunders and Timothy Spall plays her less brilliant dad with great humor; Jack Whitehall is Katharine’s confidant William Rodney; Sally Phillips is her Cousin Joan; Misia Butler plays her rebellious cousin Cyril; and last, but not least Elyas M’Barek is the radical, book editor Ralph Denham, who is assigned to help Kat’s mom, Mrs. Hilbery, make sense of the book she is has been writing, for the past three decades.
Throughout the film, we are in awe of what is happening before our eyes, both in the skies above and in the human interactions. With the kind of energy one often observes in wild horses trying to escape capture, Kat moves forward, arguing her way into schools and out of marriages. And all I could think of at some moments in the story is how in need of an Edwardian fashion revival we are — those high necked linen and silk blouses paired with long A-line skirts and the cross gender suits Katherine wears in the film, are the stuff of a fashionista’s dreams.
Night & Day is a UK-German co-production, which accounts for the presence of M’Barek — an Austrian Tunisian actor based in Germany. He’s an actor well known to European audiences for his presence in cinema as well as for his TV roles, including in Tatort and the long running Abschnitt 40. Night & Day was shot in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, as well as in Cologne, Germany.
The production design by David Hindle (The King’s Speech, Bohemian Rhapsody) and the costumes by Esther Walz (The Silent Revolution, Other People’s Money) along with the stunningly intimate cinematography by Sebastian Edschmid, guarantee that the film creates an impression in the viewer, one so strong that I’m still feeling immersed in its world, more than three weeks after viewing it at a special preview.
Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day will be in cinema in the UK and Ireland, distributed by Vue Lumière, starting this Friday, June 19th.
All images used with permission.